Wired

A Seattle-based Shadowrun campaign.

The screen is fuzzy, filled with nothing but white-noise and scaling black and white frames. It comes into focus, and Photo’s image appears.

“Silver is dead. I estimated his rate of survival at around 43% before he nearly died the first time back at the Renkaku Subsidiary Defense Job. After that I lowered his defensive capabilities somewhere around that of a coyote… or perhaps jackal on rabbies. Vicious, yet soft and only the barest of base defenses. I rated his survival then at around 34.2%, and was oddly surprised by the statistical anomaly of him having been the one to save us in Bug City, for surely I would of eventually destroyed everyone there.

“Grayfeather is oddly emotional over the entire thing, and I believe it’s causing him to clam up moreso then he ever has before. According to my research, the occult is filled with these type of closeminded thought processes. Information being secular and kept to the singular person… Merlin was a great example according to this one node. Something about a man who’s a dragon and killing magic. Something about a sword.

“Anyways… his entire outlook on this is odd. He knew Silver was a liability… he was grandly useful in the social interactions, and I do not besmirch his memory of his tongue. His tongue had an effective survival rate of 94%. I’m currently in debate over the probability of it still retaining that survival rate in the form of being used in some magical ritually to augment anothers oratory skills.

“Still… I do believe I am feeling… guilty. There were many other things I could of done, and I knew he had all of a 5.9% chance of survival in the scheme of what I sent him into. I didn’t dig far enough… I didn’t widen my gaze to accept all known elements. My survival rating has just dropped from 79% to a 73%, that 6% decrease is unacceptable. I believe the emotion I am feeling now is anger… perhaps passive rage. It doesn’t help that I am now, in my attempt to widen my information scope seeing Grayfeather’s closed cult mind keeping things that could be of importance from me.

“It makes me wonder if… no, the statistical improbability of that is beyond pi in length. I do not believe I am acting different in my attainment of information, I merely asking with more motivation. I am no longer continent to sit idle… AI Wired is still out there… Avatar is in ruins… the world’s a god damn mess. I am going to spread my web, and I’m going to fix it.

“That’s what the Wired Man would of wanted… and I miss that. I miss him… he seemed like someone that I could… connect with. It’s difficult for me to wrap my head around certain functional human limits. I am beyond human… beyond meta. Perhaps if I could meet a dragon… maybe. My goals are far reaching, and based off of them there is over a 87% calculable chance that I will meet a dragon sometime before I die… and 15% after.

“I’m sorry that Silver died… I told them we should walk away. I told them, but Grayfeather pushed, and Silver remained mailable like he always was. To much now rests on mine and Grayfeathers shoulders… and I want to bare this weight with him. Together I calculate our survival odds at over 91%. However… how he is acting… how he treats information… I’m not sure if I can give the amount of trust needed to meet at the maximum probability of chance required to maintain such large survival rates.

“We’ll see… about a lot of things.”

With that, the screen shivers and unfocuses back to white noise and static.

Photos Journal

The screen is fuzzy, filled with nothing but white-noise and scaling black and white frames. It comes into focus, and Photo’s image appears. He appears quite drunk, and has a glass of vodka in hand. He starts speaking in Russian.

“I thought, after I left the Motherland… that I might be a bit more tough. I blew all the mobs money on enhancing myself… to running… to making a new self. I figured… if I could rip off the Russian Mob, I could… I could take on anything with ease. Well, not everything. I still curl up like a dog thinking of taking on another AAA.

Still though… I’ve done my best at being… the best. Being tough. Being smart. Being one step ahead in the game. I don’t know why I let myself get attached to this… it was so ignorant and stupid. The Wired Man… he was just… a dumb kid. A dumb stupid kid, born in a test-tube, raised in the matrix, and bound to servitude. Didn’t even know what Phase Ball was…

We got a crap job… fucking Johnson… should of told us upfront it was AAA. He knew it was AAA, for fuck sake… HE was AAA. Then… then I met Wired Man, and he blew my mind. The things he did… Icon-reconfiguring, Stream-jacking… he has irrevocably changed how I view the matrix, he has shattered the laws I thought defined that world. He… destroyed my confidence.

I wanted to pull one good thing out of this world. One good thing. This place… these people… everything. It’s dirty, it’s vile, it’s without culture and barren of civility. The world is mean, and cruel, and without any mercy. I thought… maybe if I could get him out, I could save him. I could free him. I would be his savior. The he had to go and get shot in the fucking brainpan. And I know it’s not Grayfeathers fault… he was taxed, we were all stretched on nerves and worry. Grayfeather more then any of us probably… I don’t know how magic works exactly… but that many spells running is like me running 24 screens. Possible… but fuck is it hard.

The Wired Man could run fifty, and still have enough faculty to tell me to leave him alone.

Fucking prick.

I don’t know what to do now. I don’t know if I want to keep doing this. I mean… I know I do. We hit a AAA. We’re in the big leagues, we got a card… we got an in. We’ve made our names worth something about that Gradius-fiasco. But… what’s it worth? What’s the point? What’s the end goal? What’s the long-game objective?

I’m not fighting for world-peace… or equal rights… or the earth, or anything. I don’t stand for anything. Am I doing it for the money? For the hardware? Hell, even if was glory and fame… it would still be something. Yet… it’s nothing.

Maybe I was hoping if I could save Wired Man, it would bring meaning to my life. Just a little bit. Dasvidaniya comrade.

Where’d I put that bottle….”

With that, the screen shivers and unfocuses back to white noise and static.